The Ladies' Choice
by aprettyfacelies
Summary: The fact that he had chosen a song from one of her favorite musicals had earned him a batch of star shaped sugar cookies for the following morning  even though there was absolutely no way she'd be giving them to him .


**A/N:** I've always wondered what happened when Mike auditioned for Glee Club.  
>I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.<p>

Unfortunately, all mistakes are my own because I'm too lazy to beta this myself and I have homework to do.  
>This takes place during the Preggers episode, I believe. And if a few things are out of place, I apologize. I haven't watched that episode in quite a long while.<p>

Oh, yes, I also advise you listen to the song that Mike'll be singing while you read that portion of the story. It makes everything a whole lot better. I promise.

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><p>Rachel walked down the empty hallway with a grey cloud above her head and slumped shoulders. She was utterly furious at Mr. Schuester for not giving her what she deemed as an appropriate amount of solos, which she believed was <em>every <em>solo. With each light pitter-patter that came with the steps she made, the responsible and more rational part of her mind would chime:

_How would you feel if you were neglected all the time? Because you know that's how Tina probably feels. And she's a decent singer. Given the platform, there's room for improvement which in the long run will benefit the club's performance at Sectionals, which is one step closer to Regionals and Nationals, which is three steps closer to a Broadway stage. Think of the bigger picture!_

It made perfect sense, and she internally curse at herself for not realizing when she stormed out of the choir room an hour before but she was far too stubborn to see the wrong in what she had done and accept that she made a mistake. This was why the more selfish and spotlight hungry side of her would be quick to defend her actions.

_This musical puts you three steps closer to the Broadway stage in half the time! And really, if some – and by some I mean all, specifically Tina – of the members of New Directions still need tweaking, there's absolutely no chance New Directions will get through Sectionals anyway. _

Needless to say, she had repeatedly agreed with the devil on her left shoulder, shrugging of the angel on her right as she stood a little straighter with a bright smile on her features for no one to see. It was self confirmation, to remind herself that she was better off alone and that she would have to get used to it because it was always cold and lonely at the top. She pushed away that fact that stars in the sky always had company around to the very back of her mind, not wanting to believe she was making the wrong choice even though every bone in her body was screaming at her, telling her that she should just head home, take a nice relaxing bath, call the Spanish teacher and beg for her position back. Hysterical sobbing and compliments on his teaching techniques included.

She continued her trek to the auditorium while humming the chorus of _Taking Chances_, finding it a rather appropriate way to shush the goody-goody voice within her that refused to be quiet. A couple of steps away from the entrance, she heard a familiar voice boom in a muffled echo through the hallway.

"Okay, Matt, we'll have to work a little on getting you to move a little more freely but other than that, you're good!"

The undeniable sound of male whooping and cheering could be heard as she tiptoed closer to the door, peering in through the rectangular window to see what had been going on.

She first noticed Will seated in one of the rows at the front of the auditorium (it wasn't hard to identify him with his Jewish styled curly hair staring straight at her). She scoffed in annoyance and turned her attention to the stage were the commotion was taking place. There stood Noah Puckerman, the McKinley Titans football team's number eleven and number twenty eight, most commonly known as the ninja, in a circle as they exchanged high fives and friendly shoulder slaps while they laughed. She remembered seeing a similar scene when they walked down the hallway after the big match, of course Noah had a cheerleader seated on his shoulder at the time and the other two she wasn't quite familiar with were holding Kurt up, the entire student body chanting one of the cheerleader's tunes as the team took their glory walk around the school.

Their little circle then broke apart, her fellow Jew and the darker skinned male moving toward a microphone a few feet away from the front of the stage, where the Asian was currently shuffling from side to side nervously. She noticed Brad sitting at his piano to the side was a blank expression on his face and the rest of the band set up at the right corner of the stage.

For a moment, she was a bit miffed that Mr. Schue had called for the entire band for a meeting of three boys, but she realized they must have jumped at the chance to play for the three of them when they noticed Brad headed for the auditorium. They were a few of the most popular males in the school, it only made sense.

It was then it donned on her that they were auditioning for Glee Club. The corners of her lips tugged into a small smile, proud that one of her teammate's antics had interested three _football players_ in their club. Her smile immediately vanished when she had to remind herself that Kurt wasn't one of her teammates and that she wasn't apart of Glee Club any longer.

"Right," a voice interrupted her self-loathing session. "What are you going to be singing for us today, Mike?"

"Uh, I was, um," the ninja, or Mike as she just learned he was named, stammered in response. "I just want to start off by making it clear that I'm not the best singer. I mean, I'm not even sure I _can_ sing. So…" He trailed off and his friends were more than happy to pick up where he left off.

"You better cover your ears, sir. I've heard him sing in the locker room," Matt began with a little chuckle.

"Sounds like a dying robot." Puck added with an amused smirk.

"And those high notes he hits when he trips and falls onto the shower floor after slipping on water because he was dancing around too much?" Matt paused for a breath of air. "Legend has it, that sound is capable of shattering diamonds."

Puck went on further to imitate the sound in question, an ear piercing noise (amplified tenfold by the microphone he was standing in front of) that sounded like the combination of a whale's loud cry, a squealing infant and a squawking bird made its way out of his mouth. Everyone in the auditorium cracked up and Rachel herself couldn't hold back the small giggle that escaped her lips as she noticed Mike's face had turned a very bright shade of red, caused by a little anger and a lot of embarrassment.

The boy in question turned to face the two boys behind him and she assumed he had glared because his two buddies only burst into another fit of laughter. She noticed males had the tendency to do that, laugh when they were being threatened; she had no idea why they did it though. Males, she was pretty certain she'd never be able to understand them, if they were anything like Finn Hudson.

She decided it would be a good time to sneak in while the sound of everyone's laughter overshadowed the slight creak the door made when she opened it, closing the door behind her carefully before creeping down the aisle and seating down in one of the rows in the middle. She slid down her seat so as to keep herself hidden, her eyes barely able to look over the seat in front of her to see Mike.

Mike spoke once everyone had calmed down. "Ladies' Choice from Hairspray," he spoke nervously into the microphone. "That's what I'm going to be singing."

"Berry would be _so_ proud." Noah mumbled teasingly with a snicker.

If only he had known how right he was.

Her eyes lit up and for a moment, she forgot she wasn't even supposed to be in the room as she straightened up in her seat to get a better view. The fact that he had chosen a song from one of her favourite musicals had earned him a batch of star shaped sugar cookies for the following morning (even though there was absolutely no way she'd be giving them to him). She assumed Will had cued the band to start playing and the opening notes already had her shifting in her seat in anticipation and this overwhelming need to get on her feet and start clapping and dancing along. But when his voice hit her ears, she knew she wouldn't be able to bring herself up to stand because there was no way her legs would hold her up.

Rachel wasn't sure whether to list his voice under the category of velvety, silky or simply mouth-watering. And his movements, even though they were nothing but a slight sway in his hips and a roll of his wrist as he snapped his fingers, seemed incredibly alluring. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Matt and Noah bouncing on the balls on the balls of their feet in time with the beat of the drum, the sound of them clicking their fingers in unison with Mike hitting her ears even with far louder instruments being played in the background. She didn't pay much attention to them though, focusing on Mike's ever growing enthusiasm as he began warming up to being front and centre, as his limbs loosened up with each and every word he sang and his fears decided to take a seat in and watch him with her.

_Oh!_

His hand gripped the microphone in front of him and pulled it out of its hold, his other hand taking hold of the microphone stand as his feet tapped against the wooden floorboards and his shoulders rocked back and front. His eyes were being kept as far away from Mr. Schuester as possible – which was understandable, singing such a song to a man twice your age who you were in no way interested in sounded very uncomfortable – but they still looked out at the rest of the invisible crowd and she thanked her lucky stars that his eyes never seemed to fall in her direction.

The microphone stand was receiving the royal treatment. That was the only way she could describe whatever his fingers where doing to that inanimate object. They slid up and down it so gracefully as he lowered it down to the ground in one direction while the rest of his body fell to another, and when he picked him and the stand up into a straightened position, his hips rolled against the black stand in such a tantalizing fashion it caused her lips to part in awe as her eyes widened and her cheeks heated up. That was when she started questioning if she wasn't dreaming this entire thing up, but he didn't give her mind much time to think about anything else besides him. When is voice boomed around the auditorium as he sang the chorus for the second time, it was drenched in so much passion that it sounded incredibly seductive and her body inched closer to the edge of the seat; wanting to take a closer look, wanting to touch, wanting to feel, wanting to be a part of everything he was doing, just _wanting him_, period.

_Woo!_

She doesn't know how, but the microphone was once again attached to the stand and he had taken a step away from it as cheers and whoops once again flooded into her ears, but this time it was everyone doing it. Brad had the ghost of a smile on his face as he watched Mike dance behind the microphone which such fluidity, she wondered if he had temporarily lost all the bones in his body. The guitarists danced around each other as they shouted out their approval in the forms of words that were screamed by the entire school when the McKinley Titans won the football match. "Yeah", "right on" and "damn" being the most frequently repeated and the little screaming fan girl inside of Rachel was shouting just as loudly as they were. She declared that there was no way God created that boy's hips because the way he moved them from side to side so innocently only to thrust them forward in the most subtle way possible seemed far too sinfully delightful to be made by holy hands.

_Ah…_

Noah and Matt sang as they inched closer to the microphone.

_Ah…_

As they voices grew louder, Mike body dropped lowered and she took a quick glance at the ceiling to double check if he has any wires holding in that perfectly slanted position. There wasn't and she believed, for a moment, that magic was real because after years of training in various fields, she knew she'd never be able to accomplish that and neither would have numerous instructors.

_Ah…_

He pulled himself up so effortlessly, his hand pointed at the empty red seats with a dazzling smile and for a minute she could sworn he winked straight at her.

_Ah…_

In an astounding turn of his body, he had managed to get a hold of the microphone again and had landed his twirl perfectly, his feet firmly planted to the ground for only a mere few seconds before he was bouncing around the stage with so much more energy than he started with.

_Wow!_

His legs had caged the stand between them, with a space between both legs to make sure he had a comfortably amount of space left for him to swiftly pull the stand to his side. And there he was again, his body beckoning her to come forward and touch, taunting her with visions of acts that she had promised herself not to take part in until she was big in New York, asking her to run down and buy him before someone else did, before he was off the shelf and never to be found at the window of the hot men store again, before he was using his abilities to make some other female moan of his name in ecstasy.

The entire scene began to cool down as the song slowly descended in its resolve but she was still incredibly on edge and god, yes, she would love to mother his son, and as her fingernails dug into the seat in front of her, she dreaded the thought that he wasn't simply her choice alone. She was angered that she had to share this with the world of forever horny teenage females who would be more than happy to throw themselves at him after they had seen this performance and she didn't even care that she was one of them because in her mind she had a solid reason as to why her drooling over a boy she didn't know at all was a completely normal activity. She just hadn't figured out what exactly it was yet, being too distracted by that tired but enticing smirk that had found its way onto his lips when he sang that last note of the sound.

And then everything went silent.

It took a few moments before the silence was broken by a single man applauding wildly, that man being Noah. Everyone else (except Brad, whose equivalent to crazy applause was a genuine and rarely seen smile) soon followed and Matt ran over to his best friend and wrapped his arms around his neck while Mike held onto his arms and tried to pull him away, even though he was laughing happily at his friend's sudden showing of affection and pride. As they staggered around the stage for a few more minutes, Mike eventually managing to pry Matt off him just as Puck walked up and ruffled up his hair, Mr. Schue attempted to get everyone quiet.

Rachel closed her eyes and sat back down in her seat as she tried to calm herself, and scold herself for her earlier thoughts.

"I don't really think there's anything to say but welcome to New Directions!"

As yet another round of cheers filled the room once again, Rachel made a hasty exit but not before glancing over her shoulder and being met with the scene of Mike being caught in a sandwich between Noah 'I don't hug dudes, that's gay' Puckerman and Matt, 'the boy she'll find the last name of once she got home'.

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><p>She had made it out of the parking lot without too much wobbling and almost no thoughts about Mike when a hand landed on her shoulder and caused her to jump back in surprised, knocking into the figure behind her which only prompted her to squeal in fear. She turned around just as she pulled her rape whistle out of her blouse, her lips puckered and ready to blow. Her hand dropped to her side, releasing the whistle and allowing it to dangle from her neck again as she took in her offender's appearance. Her voice caught when she realized it was Mike standing in front of her, his eyes widened and his hands up in surrender.<p>

He slowly lowered his hands, as if moving faster than necessary would cause her to hit him in the hit and make a run for it. He took a step back once his hand found their way into his pockets, his shirt wrinkled and his hair dishevelled. She automatically began patting her skirt down and brushing her fingers through her own hair as she took in his appearance, earning her an amused chuckle from the boy standing in front of her.

"You look fine," he said honestly, not fazed by her outburst any longer.

She murmured a quiet "thanks" as she tucked her whistle back into her pink blouse before looking up at him with her shoulders squared and her smile in place.

"What can I do for you, Michael?"

He seemed a little surprised at her calling him by his full name, but he quickly shrugged it off and cleared his throat.

"I was wondering if you wanted a ride home, since you're walking and it's kind of late,"

"Thank you so very much for your generous offer, but-"

"It's the least I could do for my audience."

She stood frozen at the realization that she had been seen and he simply looked at her with an innocent expression that proved her honestly thought nothing of it. A few seconds passed and he took a step forward, lowering his head down to her level as his eyebrows knitted together in confusion. He stepped back when she sucked in a deep breath and pursed his lips together as he waited for a reply blowing his cheeks up with air.

"I… That sounds lovely."

He breathed out. His breath smelled like vanilla and grape flavoured jellybeans, she couldn't help but notice.

"Cool."

_His smile is a truly beautiful piece of art_, she decided as he walked her back into the parking lot.


End file.
